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Amazon has launched a digital book lending library which, as you might imagine, isn’t making the big 6 NY book publishers too happy. The program is called Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. None of the big 6 is participating because they fear a loss in sales, especially from their back lists (ie.e older titles). Only 5000 titles are available at this time, and only to the subscribers of the Amazon Prime program who are also Kindle owners.

Amazon’s gone and done it – it has announced that its New York imprint has bought print and digital rights to bestselling self-help author Timothy Ferriss’s next book. This is good news for authors because it moves them a step closer to the retail end by cutting out the middleman.

Backlist titles – books that were published years ago – are the subject of a new tussle between publishers and authors. These titles can potentially provide guaranteed revenue to publishers without much extra input.

Authors claim they own the rights because their contracts do not explicitly spell out digital rights, but publishers beg to differ.

Click here for an older article in the NY Times which talks about this.